The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Some networking applications require processing and forwarding a high number of data units, such as packets, communication frames, etc. The amount of packet traffic that a network device can handle is limited, in part, by the number of front panel ports, i.e., physical ports via which the network device is connected to other devices or networks. In some implementations, the processing capacity of a network device is also limited by such resources as memory, central processing unit (CPU) speed, and operating system resources.